The musicians can do something more now
interview
R
Rachel Einarsson3 min read|22. May 2026
It required an experienced director. And that turned out to be Mikkel Harder Munck-Hansen, actor and director of Det Danske Institut for Kunst og Videnskab i Rom. The task was the staging of the theatre concert ”DSCH” with Det Norske Kammerorkester, which now visits Det Kgl. Teater on 27-28 May 2026.
But how hard can it really be to get classical musicians to play D. Shostakovich for 90 minutes? Not entirely straightforward, it turns out – especially when the musicians have no sheet music and have to move around the stage while playing under completely different conditions.
”There was a crisis, everyone was completely distrustful. I almost got fired”.
There is no sitting on the fence. Mikkel Harder Munck-Hansen looks you straight in the eye and calls a spade a spade. He comes across as a leader who both can and dares to see a direction in the midst of chaos and madness. Or else he is an experienced, brave and well-grounded director with a particular nose for what exactly holds up.
Or all of it at once.
When Mikkel Harder Munck-Hansen was nudged by double bassist Katrine Øigaard and presented with her idea of creating a theatre concert about Shostakovich, he had no doubt. He wanted to say yes.
That happened quite a few years ago.
When the project really began to take shape in 2020, he also had to become an important player in convincing the musicians that ”DSCH” could be done at all. That the musicians can very well move far beyond what they usually do and at the same time play music of the same quality they are otherwise used to and known for. ”DSCH” has now been performed several times abroad, but visits Denmark for the first time in May 2026. The audience can expect 90 minutes of selected music by Shostakovich, staged in a dramatised form. The musicians wear costumes and move on a stage bathed in light art and also, in a certain respect, dark and opaque.
Before Mikkel Harder Munck-Hansen could even start thinking about stage logistics, expression and effects for the creation of ”DSCH”, he went into a kind of researcher mode.
”I started listening to Shostakovich – everywhere; reading about him, reading his diaries, looking into his family, the political situation and what was happening in the arts in his day”, he reels off.
”Then I picked bits of the music out and said: This is the soundtrack I would like to make. I presented that to them”, he says about his collaboration with Katrine Øigaard and her husband, Øystein Sonstad, who is a cellist in the orchestra. He has been a major driving force in arranging D. Shostakovich's music for the production.
There was, however, a practical problem in that Shostakovich's piano works would be difficult to perform in their original form. Simply because it is difficult to have a piano on stage in a concert with movement and many changes in the orchestra's layout. A substitute had to be found.
Photo: Euishin Kim
Read the rest of the interview at the following link on www.klassiskbureau.com: